Sunday, March 15, 2009

This annual poll is surprising in one respect: approximately a fourth of Americans persist in the belief that the United Nations is doing a “good job”. Maybe they tiptoed by and shielded their eyes to avoid seeing the vast corruption, the Israel-bashing, the sexual abuse by “peacekeepers”, or the habit of putting tyrants in charge of Human Rights?

Here are the numbers:

For the seventh straight year, about 6 in 10 Americans -- now 65% -- say the United Nations is doing a poor job of solving the problems under its care. Only 26% believe it is doing a good job.

I didn’t think we had that many ignorant people left. I’ll bet they mostly live in Berkeley. Or maybe in academia’s ivory towers, where you need a strong telescope to see what’s going on at ground level?

Whatever. We now have it officially: a quarter of the American people (at a minimum) are thumpingly stupid.

Republicans are more critical of the United Nations than are Democrats; older Americans are more critical than younger adults; and college graduates more so than those with no college education. However, the majority of [all] these groups say the organization is doing a poor job.

Well. Let’s take that apart -

Republicans are more critical of the United Nations than are Democrats… Now we know by at least one particular which is the stupid party.

Older Americans are more critical than younger adults... Nothing beats Experience as a teacher. All that younger Americans know is what they read in their history books. That twenty six percent of Americans who like the UN also wrote the history books that youngsters read. Once young adults get out in the real world and watch the UN’s shenanigans, they move over to the negative column.

College graduates more [critical] than those with no college education... Take heart you parents out there who spent your hard-earned money on your child’s four inebriated years between high school and work; obviously they picked up some good information in those midnight college bull sessions.

Gallup says this annual survey regarding Americans’ attitude toward the UN is always done in February. This year, it was February 9th through the 12th. I sure wish they’d called me; we’d still be chatting.

Here is their analysis of the statistics gathered:

Though this year’s 26% positive score is just one percentage point lower than last year’s 27%, it is technically the worst job rating for the United Nations since Gallup began polling on the subject in 1953. It is also well below the U.N.’s peak ratings of 50% or more, obtained at various points over the years, including a 58% rating in 2002.

Hmmm….if they re-took that survey now, after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called our country a “deadbeat”, the negatives would loom even larger than the current twenty-six percent.

The United States gives more financial support to the United Nations than any other country, but on Wednesday, in a closed-door meeting with the House Foreign Relations Committee, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the U.S. “the biggest deadbeat” donor.

The U.S. still owes around $1 billion to the world body, Ban told lawmakers. “We cannot do the work you ask us to do without the resources to get the job done,” the U.N. quoted him as telling the House committee.

You’ll notice that Ban didn’t give any comparisons or open the account books to show us exactly which countries are up-to-date in their “obligations”. We’re just supposed to take his word for our sinful state? Let's call in the auditors for a more objective look at the financial state of affairs at Turtle Bay.

Gallup says that the years of “bad publicity” for the UN due to its mismanagement of the Iraqi Oil for Food program, the sexual abuse charges against UN peacekeepers, and “various corruption scandals” have caused problems for the UN’s “image”. Image??? To blazes with their image!

How about the UN’s putrefying reality: when this fraudulent motley crew of scumbags, dictators, and tyrants gathers in one building, it’s a miracle the place doesn’t vaporize.

Gallup offered its respondents three options regarding the function the UN might serve, but they lumped and split the results in confusing ways:

…nearly two-thirds of Americans either say the United Nations should have a leading role in world affairs, in which all countries are required to follow its policies (26%), or say it should have a major role whereby it establishes policies but nations can still act separately when they disagree with it (38%).

So 64% of Americans think the UN should have a “leading role in world affairs”. That’s the lump.

However, here’s the split: 26% believes UN policies should be mandatory for all, while 38% thinks that UN policies can be chosen cafeteria style. In other words, some twenty-six percent of Americans think UN policies should trump national sovereignty. Maybe it's the same 26% we encountered in the beginning of this post, the tooth-fairy believers who actually think the UN is doing a good job.

A final grouping of respondents is here:

Only 31% would narrow the U.N.’s role to nothing more than a forum for communication among countries. This includes 30% saying the United Nations should have a minor role of this kind.

That’s thirty percent proposing a “forum for communication”. What about the other one percent? Why, those wise heads know the UN shouldn’t exist at all.

I’m with that one percent. As time goes on, watch our numbers grow.

Or maybe not. Thomas Lifson says:

An organization spouting idealistic rhetoric, but systemically corrupt, will probably gain stature and power during Obama’s tenure. He seems to prefer outsourcing tasks, as opposed to bothering with them as an actual executive, and it strikes me as likely he will find the UN a useful body. And of course, he is in sympathy (if not more) with the leftist/third world gang that runs the place.

Mais oui! Lifson has just described a global version of Cook County politics. How could our President resist? You always go with what you understand, right?

Well, let’s see what next February’s Gallup poll brings. What with our trillions of dollars dedicated to thousands of pages of pork-lust, the cookie jar may be empty when the UN comes calling.

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comments:

That quarter comprises leftist ideologues and their brainwashed "useful idiots", disproportionately young people indoctrinated on the uniformly left campuses of American universities. They do not bother to inform themselves about the UN for example. Neither can you lead them to evidence about the UN and make them drink it in.

One such socialist-bot just attended the Heartland Institute's Conference in NYC on Global Warming, with some of the biggest names in climatology among the "deniers". He denounced the participants and said he didn't know how they could sleep at night. When he was asked by the puzzled panelists just what part of their presentation he found inaccurate, the answer was that he hadn't come to listen to the lectures...

Of course not, because the poor pathetic dear would have no idea how to refute what was being said. He was merely wound up in attack mode and sent off to harangue the nearest people who disagreed with the opinion of his leftist masters.

You can spot the bots easily, in just the way you describe: they don't have a coherent philosophy with empirical arguments (heck, or even aesthetic ones) to back up their attitudes. In fact, all they do have is an Attitude, one they insist on sharing with you.

Somewhere on their person, you will find an output button, but they are purpose-built sans an input button, so they don't even have to shut their ears to counter arguments: they can't hear you.

I suspect that as these Trustifarians find their allotment from the Bank of Dad decreasing, global meetings will be less disrupted.

Of course, in Britain, the Bank of the Gummint is in charge of handing out allotments, so that leaves lots of time for unemployed adults to stand on the street practicing mass ingratitude by way of holding up large signs bashing the hand that feeds them.

Enormous high-minded transnational institutions don't work, because they can't work. They are created in an attempt to wish away human nature.

Human beings in large groups do not act according to idealistic concerns. Their actions are governed by the brokering of interests among the collective players.

Any institution that pretends otherwise -- that asserts that it functions solely out of high-minded purposes -- will inevitably devolve to a combination of corruption and totalitarianism, since it will not overtly be able to broker the interests of the powerful groups involved.

Powerful groups will still run international affairs, but they will have to conceal what they do in order to make the pretense of disinterested altruism.

It is a recipe for disaster, as has been amply demonstrated.

The League of Nations guaranteed that the Great War would be resumed, and caused it to be even worse than it would have been otherwise.

The United Nations has delayed the reckoning of thousands of conflicts, great and small. The horrendous financial collapse that we are about to enter will allow these conflicts to sort themselves out, and if we are lucky only a few million people will die as a result.

I think that your criticism of the United Nations is not fully relevant. Simply because western nations cant cooperate fully and lobby for their interest as the islamic countries do, doesnt mean the system in general is wrong.

Dont get me wrong, I dont like decisions made in United Nations, but the problem is that western nations dont fight for their interests. Even if you get rid of UN, you wont solve the problem.

Islam is not a problem and united nations is not a problem, but the problem is the sick state of the west.

Its like Aids, normally flu or some other deseases wont kill you but with Aids thats what happens.